Free tool
What's my last sowing date?
Pick a crop and the date you usually get your first autumn frost. You'll see the latest day you can sow it and still pick it in time, and, if you sow little and often, how many more sowings fit.
French Bean, open ground or raised bed
Add your usual first autumn frost date above. Without it there is no cut-off to count back from.
For reference, its sowing window is May to July.
Share this answer: vercro.com/tools/last-sowing-date?crop=french-bean
What this knows, and what it doesn't
- How the date is found. For each remaining day this year, we ask the same question the Vercro Garden plan asks: if sown today, is this crop in its window, and will it be ready before the frost? The last sowing date is where the answer changes.
- The frost date is yours to set. Enter it, or add your postcode and we fill in the date your area's first autumn air frost usually comes, from 30 years of Met Office records. It's a typical year: in about half of years the first frost comes earlier, and the look-up tells you how early it runs in 1 year in 10.
- Sowing windows are national. Month by month, from Vercro's UK calendar, not shifted for where you live.
- Late sowings are the least certain. Growing times are the catalogue's usual range. Shorter autumn days slow growth and that isn't modelled.
- The interval is yours. The catalogue has no recommended gap between sowings for each crop, so we don't suggest one.
- Under cover is a general figure. About 10% faster in a greenhouse and about 7% faster in a polytunnel, the same for every crop.
Data: Vercro's own curated crop catalogue, snapshot taken 15 September 2026. Decisions use the same code as the Garden plan in the Vercro web app. Nothing you enter here is stored, and there is no sign-up.
Vercro keeps track of it for your own garden, free
Vercro keeps a record of what you've sown, bed by bed, and Today shows what each of your crops needs next.
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